IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/b/oxp/obooks/9780198773672.html
   My bibliography  Save this book

Development Policy as Public Finance

Author

Listed:
  • Bell, Clive

    (Professor of Economics, Heidelberg University)

Abstract

This book is written out of a conviction that development economics needs to draw more heavily and systematically on recent advances in knowledge made in public economics, especially where the formulation and analysis of development policy are concerned. The central questions - how to raise and spend revenues well, in the sense of promoting development - are surely normative; but whether something is done 'well' must also be judged in relation to what is actually feasible. With unrestricted lump-sum transfers ruled out in practice, the design of policy is inherently concerned with considerations of the second-best. This awkward fact besets the analysis of interventions in all areas of economic activity, from international trade to small-scale finance. Debates over whether and how to promote particular sectors or activities at the expense of others, when viewed from this perspective, draw attention away from the humdrum, but decidedly more important goal of raising revenue efficiently and with due regard for equity. This stricture applies to international trade, industry, and agriculture, as well as to the familiar choice among different forms of taxes, seigniorage, and debt. At the same time, all proposals to spend public funds, introduce or change regulations, and reform policy should be subjected to a rigorous and uniform system of appraisal, especially when there is a substantial premium on public funds. The methods of social cost-benefit analysis, based on shadow prices, provide just the apparatus that is needed for this purpose. This apparatus and its many applications are developed at length, in the hope of promoting its use as a matter of course. Development Policy as Public Finance will be of interest to graduate students, academics, and advanced undergraduates in economics, development studies, and political science; government agencies and NGOs.

Suggested Citation

  • Bell, Clive, 2003. "Development Policy as Public Finance," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198773672.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxp:obooks:9780198773672
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Clive Bell, 2017. "Shadow prices for a small open economy under uncertainty: Which expected values are valid," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-112, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Parantap Basu & Tooraj Jamasb, 2019. "On Green Growth with Sustainable Capital," Working Papers 2019_06, Durham University Business School.
    3. Gersbach, Hans & Siemers, Lars-H. R., 2010. "Land Reforms And Economic Development," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(4), pages 527-547, September.
    4. Hans Gersbach & Hans Haller, 2018. "Hierarchical Trade," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(2), pages 1165-1184, April.
    5. Clive Bell, 2017. "Shadow prices for a small open economy under uncertainty: Which expected values are valid," WIDER Working Paper Series 112, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Elhorst, J. Paul & Oosterhaven, Jan, 2008. "Integral Cost-Benefit Analysis of Maglev Rail Projects Under Market Imperfections," The Journal of Transport and Land Use, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, vol. 1(1), pages 65-87.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oxp:obooks:9780198773672. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Economics Book Marketing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.oup.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.